It’s not just the economy, stupid.
It’s everything, stupid.

I spent this morning in the public gallery of one of Wycombe’s Magistrates’ courts. What I saw could have been a study for the Centre for Social Justice.

What I witnessed today included the following cases (I dispense with the details for obvious reasons):

• Casual theft by a man with a methadone problem.
• Taking a vehicle without consent.
• Antisocial behaviour by a person with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, currently trying to turn their life around through work and treatment.
• Theft of a phone.
• Sending grossly offensive text messages — and they really were foul — by a young man to the mother of his 5-month-old child over a custody disagreement.
• Speeding to escape an abusive husband.

In just three hours, I saw the consequences of family breakdown, educational failure, worklessness, drugs and debt. The court saw a constant stream of human tragedy.

I imagine it will do so every day this week, as will every other in the land.

What next for the young father who is thrashing around, not knowing how to be a good dad, earning just £900 a month? What next for the person on methadone, stealing to cover a gap in benefit payments? What next in the heart-rending case of the young person aged 22 years, with two simple jobs, going through treatment for alcoholism, who narrowly escaped prison today?

Enter the Centre for Social Justice, which promotes practical, grass-roots solutions to social problems where the state may have failed. Of particular relevance is this recent speech by Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP:

While crime – particularly the fear of crime – impacts us all, it is most acute in our poorest areas. The middle classes fear crime but the most burgled, assaulted, raped and the most impacted by anti-social behaviour are the people who live on these estates.

These communities, typically dominated by social housing, are characterised by several common themes:

• Entrenched breakdown of the family.
• Generational worklessness.
• Poor education.
• Widespread addiction to drugs and alcohol.
• Severe personal debt.
• And violent street gangs.

People in such areas are five times more likely to be a victim of robbery than people in our wealthiest areas. They are twice as likely to be victims of violence, and other common crimes.

They are also five times more likely than their wealthier counterparts to perceive high levels of anti-social behaviour.

And it is from these communities that many offenders also originate.

The speech outlined an agenda for reform, covering:

• Courts and sentencing
• Police reform
• Prison reform

The state is failing those most in need and we are all paying the price: I certainly do not believe the costs recovered from these people of meagre means covered the facility, the magistrates, the clerk to the court, the solicitors, the probation officer, the usher, the security staff and the administrators. This is not even to begin to count the social and material loss we all suffer from the brokenness in these lives, or the cost to come.

Something must be done to stem this river of misery, and it is not the same old top-down stuff.

You can find the full report here.

The Court of Appeal has ruled that a criminal trial can take place at Crown Court without a jury for the first time in England and Wales.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, made legal history by agreeing to allow the trial to be heard by a judge alone.

It is the first time the power has been used since it came into force in 2007.

…

Lord Judge described trial by jury as a “hallowed principle” of British justice, but said the Criminal Justice Act 2003 did allow a trial to he heard by a judge alone in certain circumstances.

…

But Liberty director of policy Isabella Sankey said: “This is a dangerous precedent.

“The right to jury trial isn’t just a hallowed principle but a practice that ensures that one class of people don’t sit in judgement over another and the public have confidence in an open and representative justice system.

“What signal do we send to witnesses if the police can’t even protect juries?”

via BBC NEWS | UK | First trial without jury approved.

Updated

Tonight, I heard some remarkable and shocking accounts of knife and gun crime in Britain and what is to be done about it.

I’ll not repeat the accounts of the crimes themselves: some are too grotesque to publish here. And that is part of the problem. Some young people in some sections of society are today so accustomed to crime and violence that it is difficult to conceive that tougher sentences will deter them. We were told that the death penalty would hold little fear for those who do not expect to live past their early twenties.

It emerged that some young people not only “hate the system” but also that they simply do not care what the law says. By the account of the inspiring young people present at the meeting, tougher sentences for carrying a knife would most likely strengthen those people’s determination to carry one in their rebellion against the law.

Of course we must deploy tough criminal justice against this problem, but we have reached a point where, if we want to stop this cycle of tragedy, we must recognize that gun and knife crime is the fruit of a societal problem and ask what we can do about it.
Read more

From the preface to “Locked Up Potential”, another first-class report from the Centre For Social Justice.:

Even when someone is sent to prison, the government fails in its mission to reduce crime because of the spectacular failure of prisons to rehabilitate offenders – work that should be the heartbeat of the system. That over two thirds of prisoners leave prison and return to a life of crime, only to find themselves back behind bars within two years, is unacceptable. Any business model with this Return on Investment would quickly find itself in liquidation. This expensive failure costs society at least £12 billion a year and leaves our streets in too many communities, no go areas.

Operationally our prison system is a familiar case of mass public investment devoid of a coherent strategy. The government’s National Of fender Management Service (NOMS), one of whose primary tasks was to cut the reoffending rate, has spent more than £18 billion since 2004, to little or no effect. The reoffending rate is still high at up to 75 per cent of young offenders returning to prison within two years.

Excellent comment from The Times:

This Government has relentlessly undermined the rule of law by its vague legislation and constant meddling.

And, after explaining that the first erosion of the rule of law is passing “laws so vague that you cannot know, prior to the decision of the relevant authority, whether your actions are lawful”:

The second erosion of the rule of law comes from the Government’s open contempt for the idea that the law defines the scope of the Government’s interest in you, that you can be on the wrong side of the Government only by being on the wrong side of the law. For example, it is not illegal to have fat children. Yet we know that the Government disapproves of parents who do, since it sends them letters pointing out their children’s obesity. “We’ve got our eye on you,” they insinuate. To which a free man should respond: “If I have committed a crime, arrest me; otherwise, leave me alone.”

Richard Bacon MP on conservativehome.com:

The right to oppose the government of the day is vastly more important than which political party happens to hold office. It is the cardinal fact which defines us as a free country.

read more

From the Guardian:

The Conservative leader said that it was “a worrying stage in our democracy” if shadow ministers could not release information in the national interest.

“If this had happened in the 1930s, Churchill would have been arrested,” said Cameron, in a reference to the way Winston Churchill used leaked information to support his campaign for Britain to rearm against Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

Nine counter-terrorist police were used to make the arrest.

See also: conservatives.com; The Telegraph; The Times; The Financial Times; Devil’s Kitchen; Iain Martin; Guido Fawkes; Janet Daley:

Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are creating an overblown fuss over the arrest of Damian Green is making a genuinely grave mistake: the cynical assumption that a party is simply trumping up a sense of outrage for partisan purposes is quite misplaced here. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the appalling significance of this incident.

Iain Dale:

At 2pm today counter terrorism police arrested Damian Green at his constituency home in East Kent. He was brought to London and currently is detained awaiting interview. It is now 9.43pm and seven hours after his arrest, he has, apparently, still to be questioned. These are the tactics of a totalitarian state.

…

If the Government feels unconstrained about invoking anti terror legislation and deploying counter terror police at a whim, on issues completely unrelated to terrorism, where exactly are we heading?

We don’t yet live in a Police State, but one be forgiven on nights like this from wondering if we are headed that way.

Update: According to the BBC:

The Lib Dems have called shadow immigration minister Damian Green’s arrest a “mayday warning” for democracy amid cross-party anger over the move.

The Libertarian Alliance have said this and Philip Johnston this:

Damian Green’s arrest: the police state is coming

And I just stumbled on this, from 2005:

While we’re about it, we couldn’t resist McNulty’s comments on The Politics Show in defence of Home Office dawn raids on asylum seekers: “We are not knocking down doors at four in the morning with people booted and suited in riot gear. Most of the removals occur around half-five, half-six, seven in the morning.”

So that’s alright then.

Update 2: Matthew Paris — An outrage that brings shame on Britain — in the Times:

On the whole, and in the main, and everything considered, you do not in a democracy go around arresting the Opposition. For some time now, web humorists have been spelling new Labour “Nu-Labour”. As reports of Damian Green’s arrest swirled yesterday, the prefix ZA attached itself to the bloggers’ joke: ZANU-Labour. If by lunch I had heard the comparison with Zimbabwe once, I had heard it a dozen times.

From the BBC, Tony Benn:

Ex-Labour MP Tony Benn was just as incredulous: “I may sound strangely medieval, but once the police can interfere with Parliament, I tell you, you are into a police state.”

read more | digg story

The survey, by the magazine Legal Business, also says that there is evidence of “cocaine clubs” in law firms’ basements and of partner-led games of poker and taking cocaine with clients. But it also finds that law firms are ignorant or indifferent to the problem. One lawyer is quoted: “I spanked £100,000 on cocaine in one year and no one noticed.”

What they are not talking about though, is the endemic misery the drugs trade causes among the least privileged. I heard just last week, how middle-class drugs money distorts behaviour on the most run-down estates.

Time for a change of heart?

read more – Times Online | digg story

read more – Telegraph | digg story

A former police officer was arrested and held in a cell after confronting a group of unruly teenagers over their behaviour. The former inspector, who served 30 years with the Met, said:

I still can’t believe this. As far as I am concerned, the police just abrogated their responsibility and should be ashamed of themselves.

read more | digg story

Sir Ian said that if targets were picked locally, rather than being imposed by central Government, they would be “completely different”.

A further change in the political weather? The BBC also reports Blair: Public ‘lack crime figures faith’.

read more | digg story